Trauma

This is not a poem and there is no reason to make this utterance, nor is there anyone willing to hear it. If anyone is reading this, I understand the complete futility of what I'm about to say. This is the equivalent of speaking to a rock or trying to find solace in the company of a tree.

Trauma, rejection, abuse, and all manner of pain has haunted my life. I suppose I was extremely unlucky in the celestial gamble and got some of the shittiest cards. It is odd, to have so much of one's personality, one's history, and one's sense of self intertwined with undiluted trauma such that one cannot perceive where one's self ends and where one's trauma begins.

I wish to state this trauma, to finally put it to paper. To finally voice it. For so many years I told no one of this trauma, and when I did I hid it in vague accounts, never disclosing the full truth, merely maneuvering around it. I may not be able to disclose it here either. Even worse, throughout all of my teen-years I was literally unable to ever think, remember, or speak of this trauma without experiencing extreme PTSD and sometimes having a seizure due to such post-traumatic episodes.

I am gay, I grew up in a Conservative Catholic household. Already you can see a problem, as LGBT+ children and conservative Christian parents never go together well (recipe for suicide), however this is merely the beginning. My parents found porn on my computer when I was young, an old computer in the dawn of the internet where I did not know how to delete browser history, if only I knew then what I know now. Perhaps that was dumb of me, I suppose the experience taught me cunning. They became an abusive thorn in my side from then on. My mother would go on about how my friends would hate me if they found out, she blackmailed me with it from time to time, and since I was not a fool I knew what my sexuality meant for my life. It meant that I was destined for no family, no love, no acceptance, and a constant antagonistic relationship with the whole world.

Turns out that my portrait was naive. Life was worse. My middle school friend Mark, whom I had a crush on was openly gay. He was surprisingly brave given how his parents were even more homophobic than my own. He was the center of my friend group, our moral compass and the life of the party. I made so many friends through him. We found his corpse one day, suicide. A messy kind as well, the gore was almost artistic in its horror. Me and my friends.. We just kind of.. stood there.. shocked. I recall how I felt like my mind was being torn, ripped, as I watched the pieces and tried to "reconnect" them into him. As if the act of mentally reconnecting Mark's body would bring him back to life. I really was a kindly, naive idiot when I was a child. 

!!!The dead body is still alive in my mind. I see it ALL THE TIME! I felt guilty, I sometimes contributed to his bullying, because of internalized homophobia. His parents could not be bothered to care.. I genuinely hate them. Still. I will gladly burn in hell if it means I can torment them for eternity. God give me this ONE gift!!!

He was such a good person, so nice, so kind. That was his problem. I hate this world.. I really do. I didn't inform my parents (due to the attraction), they still don't know about this event. I felt deeply seared guilt on two parts, guilt for the attraction I felt for him and guilt for my contribution in his suicide. My parents interpreted my mourning, sexuality, trauma, and my sour disposition as "rebellion", so they sent me to a survival camp in Minnesota for 4 weeks. I lost my mind on the camp, tried to kill the people there, was summarily sent home after about 3 weeks. Oddly enough I actually really liked the people there. I genuinely loved them, it felt like a brother’s bond, but my mind was flayed and I couldn't control myself. A month later they sent me to a Christian boarding school that was blatantly homophobic. I was raped for over a year. The other men in the unit figured out I was gay through fondling me and thought that since I was gay, I must love to be raped by other men. They conceived of "Happy Hill" as a prison so technically it wasn't gay (according to them) to rape a gay guy, after all, men had needs and if there’s a “fag” here then you might as well rape him. Their literal logic. Plus, I was gay and made the perfect "prison bitch" and so it was my function to be raped. I literally heard variations of this reasoning EVERY DAY. This was bad enough on it’s own, but the homophobic sermons from the owner of the school certainly didn’t help. I hope everyone involved suffers an endlessly gruesome death. After I spent a year being raped, I went back home. I reconnected with my old friends, found a boyfriend, but he turned out to be a monster. He was a sociopath so in retrospect I shouldn't have been too surprised, but I was vulnerable and merely wanted family, any family. Even worse, many of my friends or my "New Family" began dying due to drugs, violence, and other issues. All of us took that suicide as a statement. A statement that this world was Hell and that none of us would make it out alive. I recall discussing this at length with them after the suicide. Most of them committed a long, drawn out suicide. I couldn't tell my biological family about any of these occurrences, due to the sexual component, plus it just felt degrading. The mourning felt wrong because I felt like I caused it, both Mark and all the others. The rape felt wrong to speak of because I shouldn't be a fag and I need to be a man, and men don't get raped unless they're queers and if they are then they deserved it (my thoughts when I was a child). I kept quiet, and I have NEVER mentioned it to people in any specificity. Even after I came to terms (more or less) with my sexuality, I wanted to put the event behind me, but that's impossible. I know what PTSD, CPTSD, and other forms of mental illness are. I guess I'm just fucked up beyond reconstruction.

I miss them, my old friends. They were the closest thing to a genuine family I have ever experienced, even setting aside the fact that a few of them were literal sociopaths, and my boyfriend was a meth addicted rapist. Even with all the bad they were the only good thing in my life. Now, all the good ones are dead. The bad ones are doing well in life. I don't know what to make of this except that perhaps my friends were right to kill themselves. Perhaps Mark saw a truth that we have been too ignorant to see. I would join him, but I must live out of spite.